Emergency Contact Management via Movement Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Outdoor activities such as walking, running, and hiking can be unsafe due to injuries, medical conditions, or unforeseen circumstances that may render individuals immobile or unconscious, lacking a reliable method to ensure safety and notify contacts of their status.
Innovation Solution
A system using an electronic device that tracks a person's movement, sending alerts to remote contacts if they fail to move for a predetermined time or distance, providing a warning and location updates, with options to cancel messages and track the person's location for safety purposes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If no tracking system is used during outdoor activities, then the person has freedom of movement and no distraction, but safety cannot be ensured and contacts cannot be notified of emergencies
Solution Approach 1:
The electronic device performs multiple functions: it tracks the user's location, detects movement status, sends alerts to contacts, and provides emergency notifications. By combining these safety functions into a single multi-functional device, the system ensures comprehensive safety assurance without requiring multiple separate devices or complex systems.
2Reliability
If continuous monitoring is implemented to detect non-movement, then safety detection is improved, but energy consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of continuous monitoring, the system periodically checks the user's movement status at intervals. The processor determines whether the user has moved a predetermined distance within a predetermined time period by comparing location data at different time points. This periodic detection approach maintains reliable non-movement detection while significantly reducing energy consumption compared to continuous monitoring.
3Reliability
If automatic alerts are sent when non-movement is detected, then emergency notification is improved, but false alarms may occur
Solution Approach 1:
Before sending emergency alerts, the system first provides a warning notification to the user indicating that non-movement has been detected. The user is given an opportunity to cancel the alert if the situation is not actually an emergency (e.g., they are taking a planned break). Only if the user does not respond or confirms the emergency will the full alert be sent to contacts. This preliminary warning step reduces false alarms while maintaining reliable emergency notification.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method for tracking a person is presented. A system includes an electronic device to be carried by a person that is used to notify one or more remote users that the person is to begin a journey from a starting point to a remote point. The electronic device can detect that the person has not moved for a predetermined time period a predetermined distance. When this happens, the electronic device sends non-movement messages to the one or more remote users informing them that the person has not move for a predetermined time period a predetermined distance. The electronic device provides a warning message that the non-movement messages will be sent and sends them if there was no response to the warning message.